2006

There were 144 posts published in 2006 (this is page 6 of 8).

picture of the week 17

this weekend the 21st berner renntage have been carried out at the klösterlistutz.

because i saved two days from my civil service at the adventure playground i was part of the staff this weekend. after hauling around 300 bales of straw around 60 soap box cars raced down the rather steep hill. the car below was one of the nicest, even though it doesn’t really fit into the selfmade category. the kids got it from an old rollercoaster and rebuilt it as a race-car.

if you’d like to see some of the other participants of the race, you can do that in my set over at flickr. (or separated into the pictures from saturday and sunday).

Dsc03624

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renamed mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi scripts

yesterday evening chris, the admin of the gna-server informed me that my trackback-scripts stressed the server quite a bit.

and because i got a massive hit of spam in the morning (more than 100 spam comments that passed the junk-filter) i decided to do, what i’ve should have done a long time ago: rename my comment- and trackback-scripts so they cannot be easily guessed remotely

first, i used the direction posted here at the photoblogs-wiki and adapted them a bit:

first, i renamed

…the comment script. A good proportion of comment spam is generated automatically; i.e. a spam site will try to automatically contact your comment script which normally resides at:

http://yourURL/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi

If you rename the script you stop the automatic spam in its tracks. You can rename this file anything you like (e.g. death-to-spambots.cgi) but you a) need to retain the cgi extenstion (I think), and b) also need to make a change to your mt-config.cgi file (which resides in your cgi-bin directory. You need to look for the following block of code

# CommentScript mt-comments.pl

# TrackbackScript mt-tb.pl

# SearchScript mt-search.pl

# XMLRPCScript mt-xmlrpc.pl

# ViewScript mt-view.pl

… and make two changes. First, uncomment the first line by removing the hash symbol; i.e.

CommentScript mt-comments.pl

… and second, change the filename to match your renamed version; e.g.

CommentScript death-to-spambots.cgi

this means, that the scripts still work, but under another name [1], so noone should be able to just guess their location. but as a human person nothing changes, because you comment through the comment interface and get redirected to the correct script. the problem of this solution is now, that the spammers generate massive amounts of “404: File not found”-errors in the logs, because the original scripts are not there anymore.

to prevent this, i then implemented the Junk slow-down-solution posted over at the solid wall of code, which consists of throwing the junk-bots into a loop when they guess the original-file destination.

so if you now go to the original mt-comments.cgi on my server, you (or better your spam-script) has to wait 30 seconds before it gets to see an error-message. this should at least slow down the junk scripts and put a bigger burden on the junkers than it does on the server my blog resides on.

Mt-Commentsthe whole setup seems to work quite fine.

before renaming the scripts i got around 5 comment spams per minute (!) and now it already has slowed down quite a bit, the last comment spam (as i write it) has been more than 2 hours ago and the one before already four hours ago.

see yourself in the screenshot on the left.

[1]: i’m not gonna tell you, leave a comment to see for yourself. :-)

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oster-ausverkauf!

ich hab mal in meiner dvd/games/etc-kiste gewühlt (weil ich endlich mal alle meine dvds im dvdmanager eintragen wollte) und dabei einige “karteileichen” gefunden.

und weils im moment zu stark regnet, um zum 2nd-hand-gameverkäufer auf dem märit zu gehen, landen die sachen halt auf dem netz.

also, brauchst du ein retro-game für deine playstation (die originale) oder ein neues game für deine psp? dann schau mal hier bei ricardo.ch vorbei…

und jetzt hab ich endlich zeit, um weiter aufzuräumen! also ab an die arbeit!

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fixed-gear-gallery feed [update]

raph/dom/blaize, this one is for you [1]:

’cause i always forget to check back at the bike-p0rn-site fixedgeargallery and actually never want to miss a great bike there i created an rss-feed of the site with feedyes.com.

so if you’d like to be notified of an update on that fabulous site, then add this feed here (see comments below!) to your preferred news-reader and get your daily fix (it doesn’t get the individual sites of the bikes, but at least you get all the updates…)

[via kus]

[1]: tell me if it works, leave a comment or so…

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a funny magic trick

i got a chuckle out of this, ’cause it really works. makes a neat office-trick:

Allright here’s what I want you to do – while sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it!

[via “optical” illusions]

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nowpublic.com uses my photos (with my permission)

Nowpublicmy pictures from saturday evening are now part of a story at nowpublic.com.

how does that happen you ask?

this afternoon i got an email from clorenz41 [1] through flickr. he asked if he could use my photos “for a few stories that have been sent in”. the mail included some fancy link which made the whole process work automagically.

so after some clicks my pictures are now part of a story from conneticutkati [2], where she quotes another article on indymedia.ch.

if you want to read the post at nowpublic, then click here or take a look at the screenshot on the left.

if this is happening more often, maybe i should start to take money for my images?

[1] he is: “Director, Contributor Relations, NowPublic.”

[2] i wonder why she writes about the antifa abendspaziergang, although she’s from vancouver…

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automatic bicycle pump

Parasiticpumpover at the makezine phil torrone links to a “device” which solves the hassle of pumping up a flat tire through a parasitic device.

would be perfect for work, but i guess you’d have even more angry car-drivers around, since it uses “conveniently available pressurized air stored in automobiles.”

[via makezine]

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picture of the week 12 (with competition) [update]

we’ve been skiing this weekend. in the morning, just before we hit the slopes i shot this panorama.

normally i tell a bit about the backstory of my potw’s, but this time i thought i’d make a little competition:

i have two questions concerning the image below. the first person to answers either one of those can choose between a game for the PSP (i’ve got several to chose from), a carte blanche for one post here in this blog or two drinks of his/her choice at the next blogger-meeting. the second and third person who answers correctly has to take what’s left :-)

so, without further ado:

A) where in switzerland did i shoot the image below? [1]

update: might have been too hard, it was approximately here.

B) is there a free software (for OS X) to automatically normalize the brightness of several images, so that the seams in a blended panorama are less visible? [2]

[1]: you’re not allowed to answer this question, if you’re a messenger from bern, my flatmate or i told you personally where we went.

[2]: i know it would be easier to lock the exposure and aperture, but that’s not possible with my camera…

Potw Competition

und nun noch auf deutsch:

dieses wochenende waren wir schilen.

gestern morgen hab ich von unserem haus aus obiges panorama fotografiert. normalerweise gibts ja zu meinen bildern der woche immer ein kleines gschichtli dazu, diesmal gibts einen kleinen wettbewerb: wer als erstes eine der folgenden fragen beantwortet, gewinnt wahlweise ein game für die PSP (ich hab verschiedene zur auswahl), zwei drinks an einem der nächsten blogger-treffen oder eine carte blanche für ein post in diesem blog. die zweite und die dritte antwort kann nur noch auswählen :-)

also, dann hier die fragen:

A) wo in der schweiz habei ich das bild aufgenommen? [1]

update: war wohl zu schwierig: ungefähr hier wars.

B) gibt es für OS X eine gratis-software, mit welcher die helligkeit von verschiedenen bilder automatisch ausgeglichen werden kann, so dass in meinen panoramen die bildübergänge weniger sichtbar sind. [2]

[1]: vom wettbewerb ausgenommen sind kuriere von bern, meine mitbewohner oder alle, denen ichs erzählt habe.

[2]: ich weiss, dass ich die belichtungszeit und blende fixieren könnte, aber das ist nun mal mit meiner kamera nicht möglich…

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